The Relationship Between Student-Teacher Discourse And Student Argumentation In Elementary School

How to organize argumentation and improve students’ argumentation skills has intrigued researchers. A number of researchers have found that there is relationship between teacher discourse and student argumentation. However, there is till few researches about argumentation based on student-teacher discourse. This article investigates ways of student-teacher talk in the lessons of three teachers who teach 4th grade science in elementary schools, videotaping 15 lessons. Every student and teacher utterance was received only one code according the framework of identification, interpretation-Evaluation, response. There are three questions of this article. A. what are the characteristics of student-teacher interaction in these lessons? B. what the characteristics of student’s argumentation in these lessons? C. What is the relationship between student-teacher interaction and student’s argumentation?It finds that although there are some similarities between lessons of these teachers, they are still different. The Identification having the highest percentage is students’ knowledge claims and conversation. Less than it is the experiences, students’logic and reasoning, classroom management categories. Teachers tend to ask non-open-ended questions. Besides, they usually assess, rephrase or supplement students’ideas. The quantity and quality of student argumentation is very low in these lessons. The distribution of student argumentation of three teachers is also different. The research finds that there is some relationship between student-teacher interaction and student argumentation. The type of questions could affect student’s argumentation. Open questions tends to promote student argumentation, however, not all of open questions could improve the quality of argumentation. Besides, closed questions is harmful to argumentation. Reasoning response plays a key role in argumentation. When teachers response to students’non-scientifically accepted knowledge claim, response such as ask students for justifications of their ideas could promote the levels of correct reasons in argumentation; ask students to engage in argumentation could intrigue rebuttal in argumentation; ask students for more similar ideas could improve the levels of quantity of claims in argumentation. Simple epistemology response could not improve the quality of argumentation.